What Game Mechanics would you like to know?

[meth962]

Is is possible to calculate whether Super Arts are more or less AP efficient than Hyper Arts? I've always found Hyper to slightly better, but that could just be because I looked into it enough.

I'm not a math wiz, but I think you can do that by taking the damage multipliers above and compare it to AP used. That'll give you the damage per AP ratio, but then you can figure in the amount of attacks are required for it.

So here's an output. Second column is damage/AP, third is damage per AP and Hit.

Vahn
TF(H)-30-3 1.67 0.555
FB(H)-40-4 1.95 0.4875
BF(H)-50-5 1.96 0.392
PS(S)-54-7 2.78 0.3968
FT(S)-54-7 2.67 0.381
MB(S)-54-7 2.81 0.402
TS(S)-60-7 2.67 0.381
RC(S)-66-9 3.55 0.3939
VC(M)-99-9 2.89 0.321

Noa
FB(H)-40-4 1.600 0.400
VB(H)-50-5 1.840 0.368
HK(H)-70-7 2.086 0.298
SJ(S)-48-7 3.375 0.482
DF(S)-54-7 3.407 0.487
TL(S)-66-8 3.152 0.394
ST(S)-60-9 4.533 0.504
LY(S)-72-9 3.111 0.346
NA(M)-99-9 2.970 0.330

Gala
TP(H)-30-3 1.667 0.555
LS(H)-40-4 1.950 0.488
EF(H)-50-5 1.960 0.392
RC(S)-54-7 2.815 0.402
SI(S)-54-7 2.815 0.402
BP(S)-54-7 2.963 0.423
HD(S)-60-8 2.867 0.358
NR(S)-66-9 3.697 0.411
BR(M)-99-9 2.626 0.292

So from the middle column you can see that per AP spent, Super Arts are best, followed by Miracle and lastly Hyper Arts. But we could do three Tornado Flames in the space of one Super Art? That is shown in the last column where you can see Hyper Arts generally are the most efficient for AP and Hits required. You can do more damage with a miracle art, but if you're worried about the long run or "efficiency" then there you have it

Maybe a math wizard can check my work /

[Nightshade]

I know you mentioned it somewhere before, but I was curious about any mechanics differences between the Japanese/North American/PAL versions of the game.

[meth962]

Ah yes, I would need the japanese or PAL versions of the game to check into them. I know I was really curious about the enemy stats to confirm/deny the V-jump ones and if the Japanese version was easier.

[Nightshade]

Another thing I'd be curious to know:

Do you know what the encounter percentages in each area of the game are, and if there's any RNG manipulation that can be done to get a particular encounter? For example, I'd like to be able to get Vera + Nighto in West Voz for magic accrual purposes and to avoid other battles.

[meth962]

That would be a good one for me to look into. All I know is there are groups of encounters and each map has a table of the groups and percentage to run into them. A "map" being a screen basically. I'm not home this week so I probably won't get to play with this for a bit yet.

[meth962]

Well I found both a encounter rate and a list of encounters. Problem is, because it has to be loaded from the disc, I only see it in memory. So I'd have to play through the game and hit every map to record the values, or spend a lot of time trying to track where everything is located in the CD. The game loads things from the CD much differently than it is stored in memory.

But I am still willing to try! Besides, when I updated my walkthrough, the only thing I had missing was enemies encountered per area. That file got deleted so I couldn't add it to the walkthrough. If I figure this out, I can add it back

[Nightshade]

Would it be possible to post the raw encounter list? We can probably parse it to different screens based on our knowledge of the game if the only issue is that it's not matched up with a certain in-game map screen.

[meth962]

Well that's what I have to find. So far I can only see one map's list at a time (for whatever map I'm on). Like I said in the last post, that data is stored differently on the CD and I have to figure out where. Hopefully in a table or even better in a map structure.

[Nightshade]

That sounds like a pain.

Now I feel like a greedy hog right now... Do you happen to have any information on how the game determines whether an encounter will be a First Strike or an Ambush, and how the Gold and Silver compasses factor into this?

[meth962]

That will be really easy to find. I think I saw it before too and from what I can remember, it was a flat 25% or 30% rate for the compasses.